Posted on 04/03/2021 6:30:23 AM PDT by deport
Lego larceny may be on the rise.
French police have been investigating an international ring of toy thieves with a particular affinity for the colorful, interlocking bricks, according to a recent report from The Guardian.
In this case, three suspects were caught taking boxes of Legos from a toy shop near Paris, with the goal of selling them in Poland, according to Le Parisien.
And it's not just Europe. Lego robberies have happened in the United States as well. Last month, a man in Oregon was arrested after local police suspected he stole $7,500 worth of Lego toy sets.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
Very appropriate given the Oregon reference
(the state song, unlike Tennessee we only have one, is Oregon, my Oregon).
I worked at the Grand Ol Opry for a summer in the early 90’s and do I know Rockytop.
They told you: there’s money in it. “Acquire” a genuine $150 Lego set (small potatoes). Flip it for $3000 (if the market demands) on an auction site when it goes out-of-stock/out-of-print.
Baseball cards and comic books are extreme examples.
People still want the toys/artifacts of their youth and will pay for it! :-)
No I was thinking of Lego my Eggo...
I’m waiting for communities to melt their plastic recyclables and make giant Legos.
Termite-proof, I’d use mine to keep my dogs happy in the back yard. Or to surround a pool, build a noise barrier, make a workbench, or protect a garden.
A friend of mine still sends large packages of blue jeans to relatives in Spain, so I believe there is still a big price difference.
High price and limited supply vs significant demand.
There are many sets geared toward adults, with 3-digit price tags. With that cost, limit, and interest there may be many willing to pay a steep markup for a missed set. (Still kicking myself for not getting the Robbie House kit from the Architecture series. Would pay a good price for it.)
My mother though used to buy these 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzles that we would have to use the entire dining room table to put together. When those puzzles were coming together, we'd have to eat in the kitchen standing up for weeks at a time. Almost always, a piece or two would be missing. I think the dog ate them or they fell to the floor and got inadvertently vacuumed up. It's been a long time since I put together a jigsaw puzzle.
My own children were big on Legos and nothing worse than walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night in your bare feet and stepping on one of those pieces.
Probably. There will always be grey market goods as long as manufacturers put quotas on domestic customers while other countries have higher taxes and regulations - and if there are shortages. Hard to imagine that Levis had production issues. Probably more a question of the distribution network being less efficient over there than over here due to multiple factors such as cost of transit, cost of labor/regulations, import duties, and mark-ups by intermediaries in the distribution chain.
Cheaper to get 2 large suitcases, fill them with jeans, and take a cheap charter flight. Or, pay someone to bring a couple of suitcases with them.
My friend claimed the Euro value added tax (VAT) was the biggest factor in the high Euro price for jeans—but I do not know if that is correct.
Many years ago as I was growing up I had a cousin that built
a replica of the Huey P Long bridge crossing the MS River in
Baton Rouge, La. using toothpicks.
Do they still make the old erector sets ant more it took some thinking to make things with it.
Probably true, at least in part. But also things like Levis would sell directly to a department store, which would mark them up 30% because they are easy to stack on shelves and sold a million pairs a year it was a good profit. Meanwhile, they would sell to importers in Europe who would mark them up, who sold them to distributors who marked them up, who sold to retailers who marked them up, plus taxes including the VAT, plus transport costs between the different intermediaries, and import duties and freight/port unloading fees. Suddenly a $10 pair of jeans at wholesale price in the USA costs a consumer $100+ in Europe.
Thanks I think a kid would enjoy it.
I stopped buying legos for my kids years ago because you could only buy kits to build things pre designed, like the Millennium Falcon and costs were outrageous... Nowhere could I find kits with just raw blocks to build your own imagination... truly a very big disappointment to me...
I have grandson 8 yo and he enjoys them today.
Not cheap by any means.
https://www.lego.com/en-us/categories/new-sets-and-products
I would be willing to bet ever guy stationed in Germany in the 80s had a nice side hustle I. The 80s. I know my cousin did. He would stock up on 501s and take two or three suitcases back to base every time he came back for leave. I believe they were still American made back then.
Memories are worth the price
I’ve made my home invulnerable to SWAT teams with these things. Put a “Please take off your shoes before entering” sign on the front door and strewed LEGOs all over the floor inside. They’ll never get me now.
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